Can The Way Back Machine Return Us To The Days Before Character Assassination?

IMHO, I long for the days when the candidates were selected AT the party conventions. I actually remember the first time I heard the word "spin" on the convention floor. That was the day I realized everyone, absolutely everyone, believed themselves to be a PR and/or political insider and expert. Which, BTW, they are not.

Discussion, actual exchange of ideas, is healthy, of course. But battling from opposite corners of the ring--from my observation--only serves to further entrench each person into his own camp.

The digging up dirt effort--character assassination--of Sarah Palin is unprecedented.

The government via its own political party, back in better times, abided by, or at least gave the outward impression of abiding by, the separation of governing and campaigning activities. No taxpayer money was able to be used for campaigning by those in office, no office space, no co-mingling of time or any resource.

The "anything goes" way is not working. I wouldn't worry so much about any of the bickering, though. It's all becoming moot. The country's history and founding documents are not being honored or respected. The country's in-place laws are not being honored, respected, followed without judicial activist interference. The political parties have no greater depth than rival high school football teams. And, their unbridled ruthlessness has reached the level of honorless frenzy.

Every public person appears to have an agenda that is merely self-serving and does not benefit the country's greater good today or in its future. So you guys keep arguing and making fun of candidates who are new and not yet corrupted by what the old guard has done to our beautiful, successful experiment in liberty. Abandoning these basic things can only harm our Republic and everything for which it stands. The distraction is not Sarah Palin, but those who cannot put the greater good of the country ahead of their "team's" winning the current game.

I cannot help wonder if they are among those who think they, not the citizens of our country, should be making the "organization's" candidate selection and for the taxpaying citizens outside the inside old-boy club to just shut up, sit down, and let the "organizations" get on with their corruption of the republic.